GV 

f8d 



BE 
WELL 

One Hundtcd 
Yeats 







Book ^ ■" 



Copyrights 



eaEnaain deposie 



BE WELL 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



By 

Edward Eells 

Author Of 

"CHRISTLIKE CHRISTIANIIY" 

"A MISSION TO HELL" 

"THE GOSPEL FOR BOTH WORLDS" 



Published By 




24 CHRISTOPHER ST. 
NEW YORK 






Copyright, 1922, hy 

Tullar-Meredith Co. 

International Copyright Secured 



SEP -I hU 



ClA68ai57 



BE WELL 

ONE HUNDRED YEARS 

By EDWARD EELLS 

The practical suggestions of this brochure are 
based in the main upon three recent books. They 
are the Review of Reviews' Course in Health and 
Life Extension and two published by Dodd, Mead 
and Company, Doctor Kelley's *'High Road to 
Health" and Gordon Bennett's "Old Age — Its Cause 
and Prevention." The last, while non-professional, 
is equally worth your owning for its record of a 
tmique experience. Bennett was an old man at 
fifty, broken in health, bald, wrinkled, rheumatic, 
dyspeptic, with failing sight and meager physique. 
He took himself in hand and began exercising in 
bed for lack of strength to exercise erect. He went 
through his horizontal motions, the first thing upon 
awakening, because that was his best opportunity 
and he was really eager to be a well man. The re- 
sult was far beyond his expectations. He attained 
perfect health, perfect muscular development and 
the appearance and agility of a man of thirty-five. 
His hair grew again, his sight grew strong, and at 
the age of eighty when he met death by accident 
he was by every test as young as ever and confident 
of reaching the century mark. 

The explanation, independently pointed out by 
Doctor Kelley, is plain and of supreme significance. 



BE WELL 



The material of our bodies is constantly changing". 
Exertion of nerve, brain, sinew, or vital organs all 
makes waste, a "tiring substance" which clogs brain 
and sinew and inclines us to sleep. During sleep 
fresh tissues are woven, but waste remains along the 
line of each nerve and muscle waiting to be shaken 
loose by a little initial exertion of the renewed tis- 
sues that it may be safely carried away in the cir- 
culation of the blood. If not so shaken off and 
squeezed out of the system by the alternate ten- 
sion and relaxation of every muscle, this waste ma- 
terial remains to clog and poison our bodies, pro- 
ducing disease and old age. 

It isn't the amount of exercise you take which 
avails, but its scientific completeness and timeliness 
the first thing after waking. Extreme exertion only 
increases the waste to be removed. .In many cases, 
the whole body should remain as restful as possible 
while the particular sets of muscles are being ex- 
ercised in turn. 

Aside from food, drink, and fresh air, it isn't what 
we put into our bodies so much as what we get 
out of them that makes for health. Cleanliness 
without, within, pleasantly active and useful living, 
happy trust in God and carefree frolic with our 
toil, these are the essentials which make for health 
and endurance. Bennett's simple discovery has a 
far wider application than just to those who are on 
the point of growing old, or those with impaired 
health to be restored. The young, the robust, 
the well preserved also need it. It is vital for every- 
body. Try it yourself, and you will be delighted 
with the results from the glow of the first motion. 
The exact program outlined here is only intended to 
assist your memory. Go as you please : begin grad- 
ually if you are not strong. Kindly bear with the 



8 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



somewhat dictatorial form of what follows, remem- 
bering- that the imperati\'e is our briefest mode of 
speech. If you are tempted to think that you do not 
need to take quite so much pains and bother to be 
well and probably live a hundred years, kindly re- 
flect that health and youth are jewels more easily 
retained when we have them than regained when 
we have lost them. Your better start in the race for 
the century life-goal should give you the more zest 
in running well. So if we care to be young and 
happy day by day, regardless of tomorrow which 
is in God's hands, here is a wonderful secret of how 
to begin each day. Nothing beats a trial. Try it 
for yourself, and tomorrow morning when you 
awaken — 



BE WELL 




First of all, PRAY. Tell God simply in your own 
words that you are grateful and glad He has given 
you another day to live in this mortal life and ask 
Him to make you pleasant company for those who 
have to live with you. For this purpose, more than 
for your own sake, ask your kind Father in Heaven 
to fill you full of belief in health and happiness, and 
to make you vigorously useful for a long time to 
come; a helper, not a hinderer; a joy maker, not a 
gloom-maker; a force, not a drag; a sweetener, not 
an acidulator ; a lift, and not a weight. You may 
get something out of the next motions without 
practicing this hand-clasping, heart-lifting one of 
prayer: but you cannot really be well, if your soul 
isn't well. Every breath you draw comes from your 
Maker, and He likes to have you ask Him to keep 
it coming. Deep breathing goes with all the suc- 
ceeding exercises, and prayer, you know, is only an- 
other and deeper breathing, equally essential to the 
life that is Hving, indeed. 



10 



OXE HUNDRED YEARS 



IP 

• 


'li 


"^ 



A natural and delig-htful way to begin living each 
day is to stretch and take a deep breath. Try your 
utmost how long you can be. In doing so you can 
feel yourself squeezing together. You are con- 
tracting lateral muscles all the way from your throat 
to your insteps, muscles which will never get ex- 
ercised in any other way. It increases the tension to 
simultaneously inflate your lungs. Don't just breathe 
down against your diaphragm, but joyously try to 
crack a rib. People are timid about breathing as 
they are sometimes about praying; whereas neither 
is really injurious. Dare to breathe, dare to pray. 
even if it is only an awkward gasp at first along with 
the sigh of the Publican, "God be merciful to me a 
sinner!" 

Do you know that mature people may grow ap- 
preciably taller taking exercise? You will find also 
that what we call a suppressed yawn will increase 
the value and delight of your stretching. 



11 



BE WELL 



1 


1^ 



Forming the deep breathing habit is like coming 
into a fortune. It makes us laugh to think how we 
have been defrauding ourselves; Here we have 
been grasping about other things, but with an ocean 
of vital air fifty miles deep all- around us, we have 
been stinting ourselves out of our share in this 
most precious physical boon. Our altruistic self- 
denial in air has gone beyond reason. 

After stretching several times, turn upon your left 
side, put your right arm up bent at the elbow, grasp 
something and pull. \A'ith your left shoulder 
against the pillow, you do not need to move your 
body in order to strain your sinews down to your 
hip. Breathe high as you pull and exhale as you 
relax. This will properly time the motion. This 
business of big breathing cannot be overdone. Try 
as you may, you cannot change all the air in your 
lungs with their inside surface of more than an acre. 
This emphasizes the importance of breathing mov- 
ing air day and night as much as possible to avoid 
taking back into your lungs any of the same old stuff 
which may have been inside you a week already. 



12 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




The slower we make these motions, the deeper we 
breathe meanwhile, and the harder we strain, the 
more benefit we wnll receive. Don't be too lazy 
to live. Work your pump or your ship will sink. I 
mean your air-pump that pumps in. Now lift your 
face from the pillow, pulling your chin toward your 
right shoulder. This will not only exercise the im- 
portant muscles of your throat, round out your neck 
and stimulate the vital action of your thyroid gland, 
but it will fill out your flabby loose skin with firm 
flesh, or it will absorb into sinew the useless, ugly 
fat that spoils the back of your neck. Repeat each 
motion in its turn as often as you enjoy the puH. 
Like this motion, nearly all the following exercises 
may be gone through with under the covers. The 
little fellow is simply showing you. 



13 



BE WELL 




Now raise your head sideways enough to clear the 
pillow, press your thumb up under your chin about 
half way back, push and pull your head as far back 
as you can, with a full breath. Relax forward and ex- 
hale. Do not bother to count how many times you 
do it. Think of whatever theme may be most pleas- 
ant, and when it seems that you have performed 
each motion often enough, do it twice more and 
stop. This chin raising will further exercise the 
muscles of the throat, give you a smooth neck of 
youth, work out the obesity of a double chin, and 
pull the whole length of your spine. 

These two throat motions are our nearest muscu- 
lar approach to the brain. You should find your 
memory improved by them, your spirits raised, and 
your whole brain action stimulated. 



14 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




You can pull like two people when you pull against 
yourself. Catch the middle of your upper right 
arm with your left hand, hang on and pull both 
ways. Don't forget to breathe hard as you pull, 
then relax and exhale. Alternate tensing and re- 
laxing are what you need to loosen up the debris 
of yesterday's life. The harder you worked yester- 
day, the more your muscles, arteries and nerves 
need to be shaken free of this debris just now at the 
beginning of your new day. This is why hard work 
alone does not make people healthy or long lived. 
If yesterday's vigor entails a lassitude and a dull, 
slow start today, its activity has proven an injury, 
not a boon of toil. 

You may vary this exercise beneficially by shift- 
ing your clasp nearer the elbow and swinging your 
right arm as high as the left will reluctantly allow. 



15 



BE WELL 





iL 1 



This pull you have just given yourself has gone 
clear across your back and down your spine. Now 
to exercise just the other way grasp the left wrist 
with the right hand and push against its upper side, 
resisting yourself stubbornly. Now your muscles 
are pulling across your chest. You will be surprised 
to find how hard you can work at this. It will 
make you laugh to find how much fun you can get 
out of yourself without interfering with any one 
else. 

It isn't at all necessary to go through violent ac- 
robatic stunts in order to be thoroughly well and 
well developed. The more contortion, the less 
benefit. Nine tenths of us will find this easy way 
the best way. 



16 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




The fun of living is indeed largely just playing a 
game with ourselves. Now grasp the other side of the 
same wrist and pull. You will thus get muscles 
of the arms, back and chest into vigorous play, and 
with the lung muscles working simultaneously, you 
are stirring yourself all through. You are becom- 
ing acquainted with your own body, learning to 
love and not despise yourself any more. You are 
getting into something you will really wish to keep 
on with the remainder of your life. The drawback 
to much of our gymnastics and physical culture is 
that a lifetime daily habit of it fails to be formed. 
It is a mistake to imagine that we can work up a 
physique in school which will just take care of itself 
the remainder of our days. 



17 



BE WELL 




Indeed one of the great benefits of these exercises 
to you will be that you will joyously and worthily 
fall in love with yourself. God did not give you 
your body to be a ''prison house of clay" or a tor- 
ture cell of nerves on edge and vital organs refusing 
to function. It is to be from now on the mate of 
your soul, loved and cherished, caressed and played 
with most gratefully. At best it is a frail little thing 
to hold for a time, your immortal soul, big with its 
thoughts and purposes, but while they are together 
mind power can mightily help the body and thus 
react, stimulating itself. Each needs all the other 
can do for its upbuilding. 

Now straighten out. still lying upon your left side, 
and turn your body forward while you push your 
right elbow back. Muscles are pulling now half way 
across your body all the way down- also between 
your shoulder blades. 



18 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




Here is something delightfully strenuous a little 
lower down. Still lying upon your left side, try to 
raise your head and shoulders by the straight pull 
of the muscles of your waist. Don't be discouraged 
if you fail. The effort itself caused the muscular 
tension you are after. It is good for us sometimes 
to try pitting our will against the impossible. It 
was the way we cut our teeth through the gums in 
childhood. George Eliot tells us it is better to 
have failures in our life than never an effort worthy 
of the name of failure. However it isn't really 
necessary for you to actually raise your shoulder 
from the bed if you find you are not built in for 
that. 

While in this position, try the opposite motion. 
With your weight supported on the side of your 
left foot and your left shoulder, raise your body 
slowly in the middle, inhaling as you go up, exhal- 
ing as you go down. 



19 



BE WELL 




Perhaps it will rest you to try something still 
harder. It is to raise both the head and shoulders 
and the feet by the same contraction at the waist. 
Do not attempt it with a jerk or spasm but slowly, 
grimly, with a long full breath and a determination 
that says to itself, "Some day I will." Then relax 
and try again. Do not be afraid if you burst into 
perspiration. That also is healthy. You will be 
sharing with a king of the olden time a wonderful 
remedy for his persistent invalidism provided by 
his wisest physician. The remedy was placed in a 
small phial and inserted in the handle of a hockey 
stick. With this the king was to mingle v/ith his 
courtiers in sport knocking a ball about as his phy- 
sician told him "until such time as you do sweat." 
The remedy thus absorbed through glass, wood and 
skin of the palm resulted in complete cure. 



20 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




The luxury of lying in bed after waking will have 
a new meaning and purpose to you from now on. 
You are loafing for wages : you are sporting for a 
prize. Keep it up ten- years and see. You have a 
new motive for being industrious about going to 
bed at bedtime that you may waken an hour sooner 
than your former habit. Now reach down your 
right arm and grasp your right knee. Pull with 
your arm, push with your knee. Pull against your 
own push. It is one of the secrets of self develop- 
ment and self poise and is good also for traits and 
temper. 

The muscles of the human body seem naturally 
co-ordinated for mutual resistance as though the 
Creator meant us to grow by struggling with our- 
selves. 



21 



BE WELL 




Some more push and pull play. Clasp both hands 
around the middle of your right shin. Pull for all 
you're worth. Comfort yourself with the reflection 
that sheer laziness shortens more lives than all our 
physicians working together. Torpid muscles here 
and there through the body are the real source of 
many ills that flesh is heir to. If you wish a full 
happy life and a long one, you have just got to 
work for it. There is no avail in prayer for healing, 
or in quoting Mrs. Eddy to yourself while you are 
violating the fundamental law of physical well being 
by your deadly sloth. Too easy a life means prob- 
able bondage to an inexorable trained nurse by and 
by, also a physician forever prescribing complete 
rest and more medicine. 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




You are now through on your left side. Aren't 
you glad? Now turn square on your face. Sup- 
port yourself on your elbows with arms clasped 
and on the tips of your toes. So bridging space, 
raise your body inhaling and lower it exhaling. 
Slowly, slowly ; but don't let it down to touch the 
bed in the middle. All the back of yourself that 
you rarely see is being toned up by this strain. 
Just once or twice up and down at first until you 
get strong where you have been most weak. None 
of these exercises should be persisted in to the point 
of lasting soreness or lassitude. Just under your 
straining spine is the central nerve ganglion of the 
sympathetic nervous system upon whose reactions 
all your vital functions depend. Muscles and nerves 
will be freshened together by this daily initial ex- 
ercise as nothing else can freshen them. You are 
also getting after your kidneys and ridding your 
system of gallstone material before they form. 



23 



BE WELL 




What need have you of parallel bars to strain upon 
like a driven slave, when you can achieve such a 
triumph of neck to heel exercise as that just upside 
down on the bed? Now for a splendid sideways 
sweep in a similarly humble posture. Make a grace- 
ful arch of yourself, an arch rising from the tips 
of your toes at one end, your elbows and forehead 
at the other. Sway the middle of your body from 
side to side slowly, letting each side touch the bed 
in alternation. You are doing yourself a lot of 
good in this way, but the main thing is that you 
are limbering up the joints of ribs upon spine, 
where rigidity often causes shortness of breath, 
ending life before its time. The vast majority of 
our peaceful lives do end, do you know, ten, fifteen, 
twenty years before their time. 



24 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




In the simpler forms of animal life, you know, 
sinew and nerve are all one homogeneous pro- 
toplasm. The jelly fish is all nerve and all muscle, 
such as it has. So in man's physical nature there 
is an essential unity of well-being-. ''Does one 
member suffer? Alf suffer with it." To improve 
your condition, you simply take hold of yourself 
by your muscle because that is your natural handle 
— after you have 'thrown physic to the dogs.' 

Now be brave ! Get on your hands and toes. 
Dip down until your nose touches the pillow and 
your elbows are akimbo. Simultaneously lower 
your hips so that you are concave on top, yet only 
supported at your hands and toes. Rise slowly to 
the length of your arms, raising yourself in the 
center to a restful arch again. 



25 



BE WELL 




Does it occur to you that in thus straining your 
spine sideways and up and down you may not only 
be reshaping its cartilages from their wedge forma- 
tion which makes you stoop-shouldered in spite of 
all your efforts to ''straighten up," but you may be 
also actually brightening your mind? Clearing the 
debris loosened by sleep from these cartilages helps 
to get it out of your spinal cord, the most direct 
approach to your brain. 

Lying on your right side, you should do all the 
things you did on your left and two more. That 
is because your liver is on your right side. The 
minds of our fathers dwelt a great deal upon their 
livers. Here is something a lot better than liver 
medicine. Just straighten out and pound the lazy 
thing. In our well equipped gyms they have ma- 
chines to do it. But fists were made first. 



26 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




The liver, which our fathers persistently jogged 
with pills, may be jogged with the fingers, as well 
as pounded with fists. This organ is the great filter, 
strainer, and chemical laboratory of the body. Al- 
low it to become clogged and inert at your peril. 
As you lie on your right side, this organ lops for- 
ward and can be enjoyably punched at by sticking 
the fingers of your left hand deep under your lowest 
right rib. It is the only vital organ you can so 
punch at, which helps us to believe that our Maker 
meant livers to be punched. Anyway, you will 
find real benefit in doing so persistently, morning by 
morning. Rest assured that no medical stimulation 
will ever do your liver anything but permanent 
harm, always excepting lemon juice and natural 
fruit acids taken just as you naturally crave them. 



27 



BE WELL 






Hitherto in the history of our blundering world 
the term, ''science of medicine," has been used too 
often as meaning the science of health ; whereas* 
nine times out of ten, perhaps, the use of medicine 
has been distinctly opposed to health. "Doctor, 
Aunt Abby is poorly again ; how much calomel 
must she take?" — A famnliar greeting of the genera- 
tion which has suffered and gone. Thank God 
^'medicine" today is no longer "practised" quite 
like that. 

Your liver action can also be stimulated rationally, 
effectually, and in hearty good will to the poor 
abused organ while lying upon your back. Put 
your knees up, thus relaxing your abdominal mus- 
cles, and joggle Mr. Liver with the fingers of both 
hands curved up under the lowest right rib. 



28 



ONE HUNDRED YE.\RS 




Caution : this forcible interference with one's liver 
may be overdone just at first — which only shows 
how eflFectual it is. Begin easy, go slow, but keep 
it up, if you find you need it. 

Now you have yourself on your back, begin at 
the top again, stretch up both arms, making right 
angles at the elbows, grasp something and pull hard 
without moving your body at all. While you pull 
with lungs well filled, cough twice each time with- 
out opening your mouth. Then relax and exhale. 
In this way you are giving your lungs a helpful 
jogging in their tuivn. 

But the supreme center of life function is the 
heart. Keep your heart from tiring and there is 
no reason why you should not live on indefinitely. 
Let us keep our minds alert about this as we go on 
with our motions. 



29 



BE WELL 




Of course the supreme essential for the lungs is 
fresh, invigorating air and plenty of it coming in- 
side. All the air of the Adirondacks wont help you 
much unless you pump it in. We take it for granted 
that you intend to perform these morning (physical) 
devotions with your window open and a perceptible 
movement of air in your room — as you have had it 
all night. 

Still lying upon your back, put your hands under 
your elbows and hug yourself with all your might. 
You will strain muscles from your waist up doing 
it. Perhaps your attempts at hugging hither- 
to have all been of other people. It will surprise 
you all the more to find how much real satisfaction 
and enjoyable benefit may be realized just hugging 
oneself. 

Also -put the flat of your right hand against the 
middle of your left side and press hard on it with 
your left hand. Do the other way on the other 
side. 



30 



OXE HUNDRED YEARS 



i 





\\'e sing, "Are your windows open toward Jeru- 
salem?" and here is certainly a way of literally 
opening them toward the Mecca and Zion of hearty 
health and hale, happy old age. It is the confident 
forward look of your soul that wins half the battle. 
Open your soul-window trustingly toward God, 
your chambers to God's pure air; then proceed to 
put a rational foundation under your aircastle of 
health and longevity by living right and taking ex- 
ercise. 

Another way to hug yourself is to catch yourself 
by the elbows and squeeze hard. "While you do 
this, breathing full, just shrug your shoulders as 
high as you can, lying on your back. Then relax 
and exhale. 

While in this position, crook your arms up and 
pound your chest with each elbow alternately. It 
will take away rheumatism and help the lungs. 



31 



BE WELL 




When we shrug our shoulders, we drop responsi- 
bility and care. When we are humbly obeying 
God's plain laws of health, we do not need to be 
burdened with care. As has often been said, it 
isn't work but worry that kills. This is where 
genuine religion helps mightily with good health. 
*'Cast thy burden on the Lord," then you can soon 
learn to say a cheery "nimporte!" to every ache and 
languor with which the disease-bogie will try to 
frighten you, just shrugging your shoulders and 
laughing ill health away. 

Another way to shrug is turn-a-bout, one shoulder 
and then the other, inhaling toward one and exhaling 
toward the other. You are using muscles all across 
and diagonally — some you haven't stirred hitherto. 
It is good also to turn your head from side to side 
toward the shoulder you are alternately shrugging. 
Think of the diseases that begin, the lives that are 
shortened by something going wrong in the throat. 
You can keep yours entirely healthy just by throat 
exercise. 



32 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




Remember that if you leave any muscle or group 
of muscles unstirred by daily initial exercise out 
of your total of more than four hundred, your con- 
dition is somewhat like that of your kitchen range 
with a pocket of ashes at one end of the fire-box. 
You wonder what is the matter with your fire. So 
you wonder what is the matter, hard as you work 
every day, that you have a tendency to obesity here 
or an inert vital organ there. It is all because you 
are lazy in spots. Where there is an inert corner 
in your physical plant, there will accumulate 
a rubbish heap morning by morning-, poison will 
linger in your system, and you will have trouble. 

This is especially and most frequently the case 
with the muscles of the abdomen. Let us get to 
work on those. Lying on your back, raise your 
body down to your hips. You cannot do this any- 
where else so well as in bed. 



33 



BE WELL 




You may walk a mile and not do yourself so much 
good as by that last motion. This doesn't mean 
that you shouldn't walk at least a mile every day — 
only try to really walk, rising- on your toes; don't 
shuffle or fall along. But when you feel that pull 
up your abdomen, you will be ready to sing for 
joy, "Good-bye constipation ! Goodbye cathartics 
and laxatives ! Good-bye forever ! Good-bye ! 
Goodbye !" Here is something still more to the 
point. Lying on your back, simultaneously raise 
both ends of yourself, breathing strongly, then drop 
and exhale. While you are in this position, do also 
exactly the opposite, raising yourself in the middle 
supported by your heels and shoulders. 

Speaking of cathartics, the best advice is simply, 
don't ! Perhaps you cry by habit, "How can I live 
without them?" Why, take an enema instead. 
Have a wash-day inside. Lying upon your right 
side, take a quart or two of tepid water flowing from 
a fountain syringe. Take more if you can and re- 
tain it as long as you can. 



34 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




You may live through months of enforced inac- 
tion by means of such enemas as this, taking one 
every other day ; then when you return to an active 
Hfe, you can easily go back to nature's way. You 
can't do this on cathartics. Your kidneys will bene- 
fit by the washout as well. Now put your pillow 
down under the middle of your back, let your head 
go back over to touch the bed, and rise to a half- 
sitting posture on the full breath. Exhale as you 
return. 

Using these exercises, you will find that nature 
needs no assistance whatever, except your punc- 
tual regard for the essential moment of attending to 
its necessities immediately after breakfast every day, 
whether you have the impulse or not. Health is 
half in habit. 



35 



BE WELL 




Getting rid of constipation forever, you are 
through with the bogie of appendicitis. If you are 
ever tortured with anxiety along that line just fall 
back on the enema again. It is so much cheaper 
than an operation ! Cutting out constipation, you 
cut loose from half the ills that flesh is heir to. You 
recover easily from anything contagious which may 
take hold of you. Only if you catch the grippe, or 
anything involving fever, don't physic, just starve. 
Eat nothing at all, drink all the water you can stand, 
and see how quickly you will be well again. 

Now in the same position, reverse the exercise 
and the breathing. Catch your head at its highest 
position by slipping your clasped hands behind it, 
then push backward against the pull of your hands, 
inflating your lungs until your head touches the bed 
agrain. Thus you are resting the abdominal muscles 
and straining those of the back and chest in a new 
way. 



36 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




Thus far we have gotten along without any ap- 
pliances whatever. It gives us another illustration 
of how poor, blundering humanity almost always 
goes at new endeavors in the hardest possible way 
to reflect on the vast outlay for gymnastic equip- 
ment which has hitherto been deemed essential to 
all-around physical culture. People began riding 
bicycles at the imminent risk of their necks astride 
of wheels twice the diameter to which their toes 
could reach. Before that they worked the heaviest 
kind of tricycles with supreme exertions of arms and 
legs. Now we will use a little pulling board like 
the above which you can make for yourself in ten 
minutes. Connect the handles with a cord you 
know you can't break, then try your level best to 
break it with each pull of the arms against the push 
of the soles of your feet. You are not only strength- 
ening arms and back, but the hill-climbing muscles 
also of the backs of your legs, noticeably inefficient 
in so many pedestrians. 



37 



BE WELL 




Now for the broad, flat diagonal muscles of the 
abdomen, hardly ever stirred in the ordinary avoca- 
tions of life. Put your pillov;^ up again under your 
neck, raise one knee, drawing it crossways until 
the hip on that side is lifted from its repose. As 
you exhale drop that leg back to its straight out 
position and raise the other knee in a corresponding 
manner. This is one of the pleasantest, easiest, 
most essential motions of our whole series. You 
laugh to find the easiest way, as so often in life, 
thebest way to accomplish the ends we seek. The 
more of the spirit of play you can put into these 
initial exercises of every day, the greater benefit you 
will receive from them. In addition, every normal 
human being needs a sport for each day: croquet, 
tennis, volley ball, basket ball, base ball, golf, boat- 
ing, swimming, **puss-wants-a-corner," blind man's 
buff, ring-round-the-rosey, anything so long as it 
is real sport for you. All work and no play make 
Jack an ailing, as well as a dull boy. Beside that, 
you should prayerfully endeavor to make play of all 
your work. Grim, reluctant toil, methodical gym- 
nastics, neither of them avail to keep us young. 

38 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




You will find great sport in running without 
getting out of bed. Just lie on your back and run 
toward the ceiling. If there are two of you, by all 
means run a race. Have your own rules to decide 
which wins. Run a mile if you wish, or just sprint 
fifty yards. Picture the course in your mind, the 
thrilled spectators, the thundering applause for the 
winner. 

Some sure enough running each day is also es- 
sential to our prolonged youth. You remember we 
agreed to be on the watch for something just to 
keep the heart strong, that we may joyously keep on 
living. Our only way to keep any organ, muscle or 
faculty strong is to make demands on it within 
reason. If you wish to strengthen your memory, 
memorize daily. Now when you run you say you 
get out of wind. What really happens is that your 
heart labors and your lungs labor in sympathy. 
Moral : run every day ; it is perhaps the only way 
you have available to put a strain on your heart, and 
so strengthen it. 



39 



BE WELL 




What our world will be like when men and women 
of all ages have come to have a way of breaking into 
a run along the pavements for the vital need of 
heart-youth, it may puzzle us to conceive. Do not 
worry: it will be a long time before even a small 
minority come to be governed by rational principles 
of health seeking. Instead of seeking to keep young 
themselves, parents today are doing every thing 
they can think of to make their children old before 
their time. 

Our only way to keep young for a century is to 
keep on acting young — bother the dignity — especial- 
ly in the impulse to keep our bodies lively. Here is 
Doctor Kelley's supreme discovery — the "dry 
swim." It would be difficult to picture to you all 
the motions in this splendid composite : if you have 
never done any swimming upon your back, just ask 
some one who has to get on his back and pretend 
to swim before you. The only difference will be 
to throw the upper part of your body into the force 
of your stroke, thus raising it each time from the 
bed. 



40 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



Speaking of dignity, if you cannot bring your- 
self to run on the street — with never so many 
apologies to your acquaintances in passing, why 
just form the habit of running up stairs and of 
skipping along the hall, or perhaps you can make 
a race course around your back yard. \Miere 
there's a will, there's a way. 

You can easily tell if you have overdone the ex- 
ercise of running by your heart failing to come 
promptly back to normal action again when you 
slow down to a walk. That only shows how much 
you need to keep on running every day, in modera- 
tion. Half a mile a day will be a good average for 
those past middle life, not all at once, perhaps, but 
in the aggregate. You can lengthen your life in 
two ways at once by running to get somewhere 
quicker. AValking is really too slow for our age. 
Reckon up how many months or years you have lost 
out of your life already by walking instead of run- 
ning to get around. The two-fold way to live long 
is to live eagerly, for you also add years to your 
life by the w^ay by making every minute tell to the 
utmost for achievement or for fun. 

But you can run without going anywhere by 
shuffling your feet back at each stride. Try this 
down cellar on your concrete floor. 



41 



BE WEU. 




If yoii are in a desperate hurry some morning- by 
reason of not having been diHgent in going to bed 
the night before, take time at least to have a dry 
swim before you get up. It will stir the most mus- 
cles in the least time of anything you can attempt. 
Imagine yourself in a small mill pond or one of the 
swimming holes of your boyhood and swim once 
around it, so you can get out and dress in a jiffy- 

Your physical director at the gym will wish you 
to learn to squat and rise with your knees apart. 
Bless him ! you will find the motion ever so much 
easier lying on your back in bed. At least you can 
get it readily here, and then practise it perpendicu- 
larly when you rise. It stirs and strengthens mus- 
cles rarely used except in sw^imming. Often when 
we try hard to teach people to swim, we find that 
they simply haven't this motion of the legs. It is 
one of our commonest lazy streaks. 



42 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




Speaking of diligence in going to bed, it is true 
enough, no doubt, that we are as often guilty of 
over-sleeping as of over-eating; but the plethora of 
sleep is far more likely to be from lying in bed too 
late than from retiring too early. We feel refreshed 
when we waken at dawn, but we hold ourselves 
down for the sheer luxury of wasting daylight, de- 
prive ourselves of the glory of the sunrise, and after 
two or three uneasy, unrestful, and wholly super- 
fluous naps, we rise fatigued and dull, imagining 
that we are sadly in need of rest. The next evening 
we hold back from retiring, complaining that we do 
not get to sleep readily when we retire too early. 

Another helpful way to deal with yourself is to 
pound your abdomen with your fists when the mus- 
cles are tense by the raising of your head and 
shoulders. If there is a tendency to obesity, you 
may also profitably get yourself by handfuls, 
squeezing and rolling the exuberant surface. This 
is penance to a purpose. Let flagellants cling to 
their scourging; you also will find your relief from a 
burden. 



^? 



BE WELL 



P^ 



If you do find trouble in getting to sleep, or if 
you waken really too early, you need only to 
go through with the quiet motions we have been 
learning together, and you will probably soon be 
overtaken with refreshing slumber. If your in- 
somnia is still obdurate, the trouble is that you 
have either too much or too little blood stagnant 
inside your skull. When your heart slows down for 
sleep, the excess of blood eddies properly in the 
brain. If you are anemic and nervously depleted, 
you need to help this cranial accumulation of blood 
by sleeping down hill : if you are the other way, 
sleep up hill. Do not place extra pillows under 
your head, to curve your spine, but put blocks three 
er four inches thick under the castors at the head 
of your bed. Place them under the other castors, 
if you need to sleep down hill. Years of wretched- 
ness may be avoided in this simple way^-only you 
/" '•e bound to sleep better anyway if you exercise. 

Now for another concession to your physical di 
rector at the gym. Get yourself a pair of medium 
lig^ t dumb bells, or any old things that are like 



44 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



dumb bells. Lie upon your back and strike up- 
ward at an unseen foe such as Edgar Allan Poe 
found hovering in his bed chamber. Hit him hard 
again and again either with both irons at once or 
with each in alternation. 

It stands to reason that the best way to use dumb 
bells is vertically. You are welcome to use them 
also lifting your arms from an outstretched posture 
on the bed or from your sides up, or in any of the 
stereotyped ways after you get on your feet. It 
is a free country and you are your own taskmaster. 



45 



BE WELL 






The main objective of these exercises is not the 
abnormal development of muscle, but health and 
longevity. Yet the incidental muscular develop- 
ment attained by their continued use has been an 
astonishment to experts. No one can take excep- 
tion to your fond aspiration to draw up your fore- 
arm before long and have your friends "feel your 
muscle." It may interest you to know that Sandow 
found he could increase his arm girth still more by 
putting tight bands around them when he was 
swinging his dumb bells. You will accomplish a 
double purpose, in partial imitation, by using the 
grip of the other hand in massage as you shoot up 
your blow with one hand at a time. This is one 
exception to the rule you should make for health, 
never to have anything tight on your body any- 
where. 

While you have your dumb bells handy, and re- 
main lying upon your back, lay these weights upon 
your abdomen and see how high you can raise them 
by your best breathing. Abdominal breathing also 
is essential to health as well as to singing and public 
speaking. 

46 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



Perhaps another exception you may allow for the 
sake of muscle growth will be the tightness of your 
golf pantaloons around the calves of your legs. Let 
these two exceptions establish your rule never to 
impede your circulation or your vital functions by 
any kind of tight clothing. Let the weight of your 
nether garments hang symmetrically from your 
shoulders. Do not make a beetle of yourself with 
an additional skeleton upon your outside. Health 
certainly comes first before either fashion or false 
modesty. 



47 



BE WELL 




Nevertheless it is a legitimate part of our con- 
scientious endeavor to look young and well as long 
as we live. Our motive may be entirely unselfish ; 
for senile, decrepit forms and faces make eye-sores 
on the human landscape. It should be a part of 
our religion to look well, and to make our body 
the house beautiful of a beautiful soul within. In 
addition to making your body erect, shapely, facile 
by the foregoing motions, you can make your face 
smooth, youthful, pleasing in its expression and 
coloring. Let us begin at the bottom. Draw your 
chin down and massage it by the alternate upward 
and downward rub of the bases of yoiir thumbs. 

You can give yourself a more decided chin in this 
way, besides getting any flabbiness out of it. But 
if you have too much chin already, it will be better 
to leave it alone. 



48 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



This dry rub of facial massage can be absolutely 
depended upon to smooth out wrinkles, fill flabby 
skin with well rounded muscle, and make the face 
glow with the hue of health. All the skin foods 
and cream.s you may rub in have but this one ad- 
vantage — the plain act of rubbing. It is impossi- 
ble to really feed your skin except by digestion and 
assimilation of what you eat promoted by system- 
atic exerciser of vital sinews. 

The same rub you have just given your chin may 
be profitably given between the chin and the under 
lip. But the best thing you can do for the look of 
your mouth will be to hook your little fingers in the 
ends of it and alternately pull and relax. The mus- 
cles of the lips are circular. You can tense them 
in this way and also by whistling all the day. You 
will not make your mouth bigger by tensing its 
muscles. You will simply make its muscles more 
firm? take out the droop at the corners, and smooth 
the lines about the ends of it. 



49 



BE WELL 




We can smooth out more lines and round the 
cheeks by developing the muscles of the jaws. 
Chewing and smiling help ; but massage is essential. 
Contract your muscles by an exaggerated smile and 
by pulling down your chin, then rub your cheeks 
simultaneously or in alternation by the upward 
push of the heels of your hands. Keep it up as 
long as your arms hold out. 

A sideways rub just under your cheekbones close 
to your nose with the muscles tense as before, using 
the bases of your thumbs, will help fill shrunken 
places with sinew or rub out fat. The glow you 
feel coming to your face shows how much your 
skin is being benefited. The heightened color en- 
gendered will be permanent and really beautiful. 
You are ''making up" in reality. Nature's own hue 
of health does help people to love you. Cosmetics 
lead them secretly to despise you. Take your 
choice. 



50 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



Your hair also has, of course, a good deal to do 
with the youthfulness of your appearance. Ben- 
nett was bald at fifty and had a fine suit of hair at 
eighty. The main requisite again is exercise. Men 
go bald in front rather than at the back of the head 
because the muscles under the scalp are being con- 
tinually exercised above the neck. While you are 
lying on your back each morning, move the muscles 
under your scalp. Wash your head once a week 
with tar soap. Go bareheaded as much as the law 
of your community allows. 

Also exercise the muscles of your face — in 
solitude. 

Crows' feet at the corners of the eyes converge 
and point to glazed eyeballs coming, with a name 
plate above on the lid of your coffin. Crows' feet 
are the result of shrunken muscles and flabby skin. 
Rub them out with the heel of your hand. Do 
not let them tell lies about you now that you are 
on the high road to health and longevity. Massage 
the muscles beneath and quicken the skin into life 
by rubbing. Soon your crows' feet will walk off 
and disappear. 



51 



BE WELL 




In the same way the lines In your forehead 
which are such a detriment to your appearance, 
may be gotten rid of. If it is a painful frown 
between the eyebrows, tense the opposite muscle 
by elevating your brows and rub hard with the 
ends of your fingers. If the lines are horizontal 
ones of a weak will and surrender to care, pull them 
down with a frown of determination and rub, rub 
rub [ Rubbing the sides of your nose also with the 
tips of your fingers will whiten it by making the 
skin healthy. Isn't that far and away ahead of 
talcum? 

Finally, the muscles around your eyes can be de- 
veloped to save them from surrounding hollows. 
While you lie upon your back, let your glance rove 
around the border of the wall paper, around and 
around, over and over. It will tire you at first: 
that shows to how little use you have ever put 
these muscles. Don't tell your oculist, but the lack 
of muscular exercise is half that ails your eyes. 



52 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 




Now you are ready to roll out of bed. First 
roll a number of times from ope side of it to the 
other. See how near you can come to rolling off 
without that catastrophe. Meanwhile speculate on 
the mystery of how you roll. Bless you ! here are 
muscles working- all around your body which you 
never knew you were possessed of, much less ever 
thought of exercising before. You have seen your 
horse do it, and raised your price on him when he 
went clear over. Now raise the value on yourself 
to yourself for limbering up laterally. If your bed 
is narrow, get down and roll on the floor. Try and 
see if you can spring to your feet without touching 
anything with your hands at the end of yopr roll. 

Perhaps one in a hundred of us may succeed in 
this — because he really thinks he can. Others may 
leave out half these exercises because they think 
they can't do this or that motion — and never try. 



S3 



BE WELL 




54 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



\MiiIe the tepid water is running- for your indis- 
pensable morning- bath — either in the tub or by the 
splash of your hands — there are two or three thing's 
vou can do with yourself better standing than lying 
down. Put your arms akimbo and make your bow 
to the day, inhaling strongly as you go down. 
Exhale while you swing back as far as you can. 
Clasping your hands behind your head, you can 
swing a wider arc. By way of variety, this and 
the succeeding motion sidewise can be profitably 
made with arms arched above the head, the tips 
of the fingers interlacing. You can also make the 
motion above with the arms extended, sweeping 
nearly a circle, throwing your head forward and 
back with your body, and bending your knees. 

Exercising vertically, your own weight comes in 
differently as a factor in body building. You will 
find that it will pay you to be thorough with your- 
self. Complete daily initial exercise, generous 
breathing of real air, and moderate eating of what 
is called coarse food are the three essentials of ful- 
ness of life. Remember that whatever is not food 
is poison, also what is over your natural allowance 
is poison. Why not cut it all out and be really 
happy? 



55 



BE WELL 




56 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



With your arms akimbo again, swing slowly side- 
wise, inhaling one way, exhaling the other. Make 
the swing so complete as to raise the outside foot 
to tip toes. Then for variety swing with your arms 
straight out from your shoulders. 

Some of you will exclaim, "How can I with my 
rheumatism, my lumbago, my neuritis?" Man alive! 
this is the way to bow and wave goodbye forever to 
such companions. Pain, as has been fitly said, is 
generally the cry of the nerves for richer blood. 
You will never get that lying around and taking 
medicine. Blood making is the result of gland ac- 
tion which can only be stimulated by exercise. Yes, 
you can say goodbye to neuralgia, acid rheumatism 
and all the rest. Try it, and 3'ou will sed. 

As quickly as you can, get into the rough and 
tumble way of living. Go out in the rain and snow. 
Frolic with the wind. Be careful not to dress too 
warmly and not to breathe so much warm, dead 
air. Y'our body was built to radiate heit, not to 
absorb it. Like a self regulating incubator, your 
vital flame is apt to burn low as you put less de- 
mand upon it. 



57 



BE WELL 




58 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



You can even stand wet feet if you keep moving 
briskly, and change to dry footwear before your feet 
are still. Damp clothing also does most damage 
where there is least motion, as between the shoulder 
blades. Keep moving, and old man 111 Health won't 
catch up with you. If your work is sendentary, 
stop now and then, throw out your arms, breathe 
strong and think of something funny you forgot 
to laugh about. Nothing helps like a genuine, 
hearty laugh now and then. 

With your arms akimbo in your nightclothes — 
or nude still better — twist the upper part of your 
body around and back around the other way, timing 
yourself by your breathing. Do nothing with a 
jerk. Imitate the placidity of a torsion pendulum. 
At the same time move your head with the twist of 
your body. Vary by swinging your arms wide as 
you sway. 

Also stretch your arms straight out sidewise and 
twirl them around first forward and then backward, 
at first horizontally, then in as wide a circle as you 
can make. Then slap the palms of your hands to- 
gether at the full reach of your arms in front, and 
try with the swing of your arms to slap the backs 
of your hands together behind your shoulder blades. 



?o 



BE WELL 




60 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



Undoubtedly the weight of your body standing 
will help in exercise for the development of legs 
and feet. You may profitably repeat the legs 
akimbo motion you made in bed, dropping and ris- 
ing again with your spine kept erect and your arms 
also akimbo. Then the hill climbing muscles of the 
backs of your legs can be further strengthened by 
dropping and rising again, bending the knees 
straight forward, keeping them close together. The 
stately bow and the courtesy are both good and 
pleasing exercisfe. The bow is made putting the 
right foot forward, placing the right hand upon the 
heart, bending the left knee very slowly and inclin- 
ing the head just a little. The courtesy, as you 
know, is a cute little simultaneous bob of the spine, 
neck and both knees. 

Grace of bearing will be the pleasing by-product 
of our health- seeking, by bedroom physical culture. 
You may set it down as a rule that the exercise 
which isn't graceful is not the most truly helpful. 

Here is a motion whose awkwardness for you at 
first shows the novelty of its muscular play. Stand 
with your legs wide apart and sway your body from 
side to side, bending the knee beneath you. When 
you have learned to do it easily with arms hanging 
limp, try it with arms raised in graceful arcs. 



61 



BE WELL 




62 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS 



By all means teach these motions to your chil- 
dren, strengthening- precept by example. If you 
wish your boy or girl to live long and successfully, a 
blessing to their newer world, show them how to 
begin each day gleefully getting their bodies in 
trim. The world waits to see how far over the 
centenarian line a life can be efficiently prolonged 
by keeping the priceless jewel of youth undimmed 
from its beginning. 

Half the value of a man, as of a horse, may be 
in his feet. Wearing stifif shoes deprives our feet 
of their natural action and life. It would be a thou- 
sandfold better for humanity to go barefoot, even 
sometimes in the snow. But one mitigating exer- 
cise you can go through each morning is this of 
rising on tiptoe ten times at the least. Fallen 
arches can be prevented or relieved thus as in no 
other way. 

What do you say, friends, to organizing a cen- 
tenarian society with a gold medal birthday cele- 
bration for the first one of us who scientifically 
attains the close of the hundredth year by keeping 
the disease of old age at bay? Will not the benefit 
of the quest be well worth the endeavor, whether 
few or many attain the prize? Simply send your 
name, permanent address and certified birth date to 
the Tullar-Meredith Co. and let us get together 
for the promotion of humanity's choicest material 
boon, the blessing of health. 



63 



